James Tindall ABSTRACT: The technological ability to distinguish drug plants from other plant types has important implications for law enforcement (LE), wildfire recovery, reservoir protection, environmental impact, agricultural issues, and military concerns. This ability, termed “deconvolution,” can be a valuable technological tool to fight drug trafficking and thus the war on terror. The use of…

Charles Perrow ABSTRACT: In reorganizing homeland defense after 9/11, the government had three options: White House control, power sharing between agencies, or congressional control. The option pursued – reorganizing twenty-two separate agencies under a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reporting to Congress – has resulted in a dysfunctional organization that is understaffed and underfunded, while…

Thomas Goss ABSTRACT: A secure homeland is the nation’s first priority and is fundamental to the successful execution of its military strategy. The U.S. military will continue to play a vital role in securing the homeland through military missions overseas and by executing homeland defense and civil support missions, and supporting emergency preparedness planning activities.…

Christopher Bellavita and Ellen Gordon ABSTRACT: Homeland security is in a pre-paradigm phase as a professional discipline. There are at least four dozen ways colleges, universities, agencies, and textbook publishers have conceptualized homeland security education. A review of the principal themes presented by those entities identified over fifty topics that come under the rubric of…

Download the full issue. Welcome to the second issue of Homeland Security Affairs. The central theme is Hurricane Katrina. We also offer articles about critical infrastructure protection and capabilities based planning. One of homeland security’s most recognizable aphorisms is “the private sector owns 85% of the nation’s critical infrastructure.” This frequently cited, but rarely examined,…

Larry Irons ABSTRACT: The concept of predictable surprises, i.e. failures to take preventative action in the face of known threats, was outlined by Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins in their book by the same name. This paper discusses predictable surprises as primarily organizational events that result from failure of organizational processes to support surprise-avoidance rather…

William Carwile ABSTRACT: Unified Command, as a part of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), was successfully used in the state-federal response to the catastrophic disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi in 2005. Four elements to determine the members of a Unified Command include: authority, co-location, parity and common understanding. Modifications made to ICS…

Christopher Bellavita ABSTRACT: Hurricane Katrina shattered belief that the nation’s homeland security system was ready for a major terrorist attack. Public administrators staff that system. Katrina provides an opportunity to review the central normative premise of public administration: competence. This article briefly reviews the changing competence frameworks that have guided public administration since the 1880s.…

Charles Perrow ABSTRACT: FEMA was used once before, under President Reagan, for counter-terrorism and as a result, natural disaster response and mitigation suffered. It was repaired under President Clinton, but again, counter-terrorism has eaten up FEMA’s natural disaster budget and skills. SUGGESTED CITATION: Perrow, Charles. “Using Organizations: The Case of FEMA.” Homeland Security Affairs 1,…

Robert Watts ABSTRACT: As a maritime nation, the United States is economically and strategically reliant on its ports, a fact well known to our potential enemies in the Global War on Terror. A successful attack against maritime critical infrastructure in our ports has the potential to cause major economic disruption and create mass casualties and…